I'm back from temporary hiatus! I haven't written anything in something like 3½ months. I'm working on a longer chapter fic, but for now you just get this short, very angst-y piece. Thanks to my wonderful beta The Confused One for helping me out with this.
And, as always, none of this stuff belongs to me. If Dick Wolf and Co. want to sue, all they'll get is the $460 I've been saving for Christmas shopping.
It was exactly 3:24 on a Thursday morning, and Alex Eames was wide awake.
She was sitting almost perfectly still, sunk deep into the plush cream-colored fabric of her couch. A steaming cup of hot chocolate was gripped in one hand and a photograph in the other.
She'd been staring at the picture for hours on end, only moving to make the hot chocolate and to wipe tears from her red, puffy eyes. Her reverie was occasionally broken by bouts of fitful sleep that came whenever she temporarily ran out of tears.
To someone who didn't know her, the photo might seem like an odd thing to cry over. It showed a man and woman on a beach sitting on towels, hands intertwined, both wearing sunglasses and bathing suits. Their positioning showcased her shimmering diamond ring and his engraved gold band.
It was an image of a past that was gone, but far from forgotten. It hearkened back to a time not so long ago when she'd had everything she could ever want. A time when she'd been truly happy.
A time before a drug dealer's bullet had taken it all away and replaced it with a gaping hole. A hole that, no matter how much time passed, would never completely go away.
She didn't go to work that day. She told Deakins it was the flu. They both knew it wasn't true, but he remembered what day it was and let it go.
Bobby wasn't surprised when he told him about the call. In his own odd way, he'd known that she wouldn't be up to investigating homicides today. Not with this weighing on her mind.
Her captain and her partner were two of the very few people who knew about what had happened. She never talked about it if she could help it, preferring to avoid the emotional response the memory always brought.
Deakins had always known. She'd already been in Major Case when it happened. He'd been good to her during what had been the worst days of her life, letting her take as long as she needed before she returned to work. He was always careful to avoid any mention of it. And though he tried to be discreet, she caught the subtle looks he gave her whenever the murder of a cop was mentioned.
And Bobby…well, he'd found out the hard way. When her eyes had welled up at the mention of Terrence Sommers, he'd walked her outside and listened as she got up the courage to tell him the whole story of what Sommers had done. He'd held her and waited patiently while she cried what seemed like every tear in her body into his shoulder.
As she sat and stared at the picture, a few more tears fell.
10 years, she thought to herself. 10 years, and it still hasn't healed.